Yoga backed for back-ache
Tuesday November 1st, 2011
Yoga can make a dramatic difference to people with back-ache, British researchers reported today.
The
findings, involving more than 300 people, follow a study last week which
confirmed the benefits of yoga - but said a specially designed course
of stretching exercises could be just as helpful.
Researchers are focusing on chronic lower back pain, which is notoriously hard to treat and causes millions of lost working days.
The latest findings are published in the Annals of Internal Medicine while last week's were in the journal Pain.
Researchers at Hull York Medical School and York University put half their volunteers on a special 12 week yoga programme. The other half received usual medical care.
The study found that patients who did yoga could do 30 per cent more after three months than the others. However comparisons with studies of another "alternative" exercise technique, the Alexander, suggested this might be more effective than yoga.
Researcher Professor David Torgerson said: "Back pain is an extremely common and costly condition.
"Exercise treatment, although widely used and recommended, has only a small effect on back pain. We therefore set out to investigate an alternative approach using a specially-developed weekly yoga programme for back pain sufferers to see if this allowed them to manage their back pain more successfully.
"Our results showed that yoga can provide both short and long-term benefits to those suffering from chronic or recurrent back pain, without any serious side-effects.”
And Professor Alan Silman, medical director of Arthritis Research UK, which funded the research, said: “We’re delighted that our trial has shown that yoga provides such positive benefits for people with chronic low back pain.
"This extremely common condition cannot be managed with painkillers alone and there is an urgent need to have non-drug therapies that sufferers can utilise in their own home."
Annals of Internal Medicine November 1 2011;vol. 155 no. 9 569-578
Tags: Alternative Therapy | Pain Relief | UK News
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